Princes (c. 1423-33). Among the others are The Temple of Glass, a tedious loveallegory; Guy of Warwick; religious poems like The Life of Our Lady; saints' lives like Edmund and Fremund, Albon and Amphabel, St. Margaret; beast-fables like The Churl and the Bird; and a large number of shorter poems like London Lickpenny and December and July. This list is far from complete. A large number of occasional poems, such as the lives of St. Edmund and St. Alban, might have been included; for Lydgate was ready to adapt his poetic power to any occasion or to any subject. He was the journeyman-poet of his time, who could always be appealed to for a copy of verses. Lydgate was, in matters of metre and inspiration, an enthusiastic imitator and admirer of Chaucer; but this fact, however praiseworthy in one sense, was his undoing as a poet. His environment and his training had left him a different man altogether from Chaucer; and his original gifts made it impossible that he should succeed in a mere following of the master. He never successfully caught the secret of Chaucer's rhythm; and though many echoes of Chaucerian phrases and ideas meet us in his poems, we are never deluded into a doubt about their origin. No poem of Lydgate's could possibly be ascribed to Chaucer. He shows at times a pleasant faculty for nature-description; but he cannot sustain a high note through many lines. He had no ear for melody and no precise principle of scansion; his heroic couplets and rhyme-royals rarely remain long true to the spirit of the metres. He had no self-criticism, no sense of artistic proportion. All his long poems are therefore intolerably tedious to read. We cannot endure their interminable verbosity, their flat and uninspired prolixity. Lydgate, in fact, suffered from a fatal facility in verse-making, which was never checked by suitable self-knowledge or by any outside criticism. In an age barren of great poetry he was highly valued, because he was almost alone. The Storie of Thebes purports to be a new Canterbury Tale, the first to be told on the return journey. It amplifies the Knight's Tale, by giving the whole story of which that poem is a part; its matter is drawn from a French version of the Thebaid of Statius, and is versified in heroic couplets, which are in many mechanical points reminiscent of Chaucer's, but wholly fail as a vehicle of dramatic narrative in Lydgate's hands. The knight who told the story of Palamon and Arcite would never have owned this dry and inartistic production. The Troye Book is even more ambitious, and does for Troilus and Criseyde what he had already done for the Knight's Tale. It is a poem of great length, telling the whole Troy legend as it was known in the Middle Ages, from the Trojan History of the Italian Guido delle Colonne. Again, the length and unevenness of the poem are fatal to any enjoyment of it today; but its great popularity shows that it possesses qualities that appealed to the mediæval mind. The fullness of detail and the absence of the Greek atmosphere would be virtues in a feudal baron's hall, where poetic refinement would not carry so much weight. Again, in The Falls of Princes, did Lydgate expatiate upon a poem of Chaucer's-this time on the Monk's Tale. This might have grown tedious, it will be remembered, but for the host's impatience. It is said that it was Duke Humphrey who commissioned this work from Lydgate, who was again little more than a translator of a French version of Boccaccio's De Casibus Illustrium Virorum; he tells the procession of dismal stories at great length in the seven-lined rhyme-royal (see post, James I. of Scotland, p. 35), which he manages with some skill. It is probably his best work on the whole : it gave him frequent opportunities for agreeable descriptions, for moral reflection, for pathos, of which he took advantage; but it Taipnuram luaduis mituchttur. qui uitam cau Initial Letter from an English Illuminated Bible of the 14th Century, has also weary pages of laborious versifying, which it is difficult to understand so ardent a Chaucerian being able to tolerate. Some of the shorter poems are more successful in recalling their inspirer, and the Complaint of the Black Knight has been included in certain editions of Chaucer's works. In one respect-namely, in versatility-Lydgate approaches Chaucer. His minor poems are often quite happy, though they are never likely to excite any one to excessive admiration. Most of the verses written "to order" are of poor quality, though the life of St. Edmund, written con amore at the command of Henry VI., is not entirely without interest. Once, in London Lickpenny, he showed a turn of humour which might have been advantageous to his longer works. Few of his works, however, came from him so spontaneously as this short poem. It was his misfortune to write at the dictate of others, rarely from an inward impulse towards poetry. He was the public poet of his time, an uncrowned laureate who could not resist the command of uncritical patrons in high places. THOMAS HOCCLEVE (c. 1370-c. 1450) Life. A disciple of Chaucer who enjoyed a personal acquaintance with his master, Thomas Hoccleve, or Occleve, was a native of London, though born at some village from which he took his name-possibly Hockliffe, near Dunstable, in Bedfordshire. A pleasant poem entitled La Male Règle de T. Hoccleve (1406) contains an elaborate confession of youthful dissipations, which is doubtless truthful in the main, though such confessions were conventional enough in the poetry of the time. Through life he was a valetudinarian, and complains of stooping shoulders and pale face; but his habits as well as his occupation accentuated his defective health. In 1387 he entered political service in the office of the Privy Seal, and seems to have maintained his connection with the government throughout his life. In 1399 he was awarded a pension of £10, which was increased to £13, 6s. 8d. in 1409; but poems and balades survive to show that he was, like his master Chaucer, often in debt and ready to apply plaintively for relief. Of the last years of his life nothing is known, but the date 1446 has been assigned to one of his minor poems, and his life may therefore have been as long as Lydgate's. Works. Hoccleve's works are numerous, but not all of them have been printed, and he did not enjoy Lydgate's high reputation. The longest of those which are now accessible is The Gouvernail of Princes (1411-12), a translation of the Latin work of an Italian scholar, Ægidius, called De Regimine Principum. The poem was done into English for the benefit of the sons of Henry IV., and is of very unequal interest. It is not unduly long, and the rhyme-royal stanzas are easy and fluent, though never rising to any distinction of style. The introduction, which is a dialogue between the poet and an old man brought to poverty by his vices, contains a good deal of interesting personal matter, which reveals Hoccleve as an egotistic and fussy individual, naïvely garrulous, like the communicative Pepys; the well-known passage on the death of Chaucer is by no means deficient in dignity and pathos. The main body of the poem is didactic and devoted to moral instruction; it gives much wise advice to the Prince of Wales, who appears here in a very favourable guise. All the same, Hoccleve is no mere toady, though his personal interests were at stake. While he praises the prince for his devotion to learning, he also sings the glories of peace. By numerous examples, culled from his wide reading and from his personal experiences, he enforces his lessons, and the career of Henry V. may have owed something to them. The poem can be read without undue toil. other works, we may mention La Male Règle for its personal touches; Of his also a Complaint and a Dialogue which owe such interest as they have to the same feature; Cupid's Letter, a dull and pedantic apology for the peculiarities of women; two tales-Jonathas and The Emperor Gereslaus' Wife-which are not ill-told; a fine poem on The Mother of God, which was long ascribed erroneously to Chaucer; and his poetical appeal to Sir John Oldcastle, urging him to withdraw his fine talents from the support of Lollards, heretics, and traitors. Character. Hoccleve's personal character seems to have been weak and timorous, but outspoken and direct on occasions. He was a zealous supporter of the orthodox faith, a serious moralist, and a loyal subject of the "noble Henries." He had no great poetic powers, and made no pretence of originality. It is to his credit, as to Lydgate's, that he recognized the supremacy of Chaucer in the literary sphere; it was not his fault that he had not the brilliancy of the leading star in the firmament. He did what learning and toil could do to atone for the niggardliness of nature. Unfortunately it was not enough to preserve the attention of later generations. Let us add that he adorned one of his manuscripts with a priceless portrait of his adored exemplar, the only one which survives. STEPHEN HAWES (1474-5-c. 1530) In The last of the English mediæval poets was a man of very considerable learning, but of very narrow poetic gift. In Stephen Hawes, the allegorical romance as developed by Chaucer and Lydgate expired through mere lack of breath. justice to Hawes, however, two facts must be remembered. He had, in the first place, to deal with the language in a state of uneasy transition. The use of the final -e and the pronunciation of foreign words, both of which were quite definite in Chaucer's day, had fallen into uncertainty by the end of the 15th century, and it may be that Hawes's metrical infelicities are in part due to his different standards of accentuation. Again, he is pre-eminently the product of the reign of Henry VII., and reflects its unambitious and essentially practical spirit. The king was not inappreciative of literature or scholarship, but there was nothing about him to excite his protégé to enthusiasm. Add to this the fact that Hawes was unduly respectful to the prestige of his predecessors, especially to Lydgate's, and we need not be surprised to find that his verse is decidedly dull. Yet in the spirit of his chief work he does faintly foreshadow the Faerie Queene; allegory with him is essentially of moral purpose; his romantic chivalry is made to serve virtue rather than minister to beauty. But he had nothing of Spenser's prolific invention, none of his instinct for beauty in colour or in movement. He was the scholarly moralist, casting his thoughts in a mould that was merely conventional. Life.—Little is known of his life, which extended from about 1475 to about 1530. He served at the court both of Henry VII. and of his son, and seems to have been appreciated for his dramatic powers, for his learned conversation, and for a wonderful memory which enabled him to recite long passages of poetry without pause or mistake. The Pastime of Pleasure, his most important work, was written in 1506, and printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517. It is more fully described as "the history of Grand Amour and La Belle Pucelle; containing the Knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Course of Man's Life in the World." If the first part of this title promises something in the nature of romance, the second part suggests a more severe fare; and it is this second part which is most characteristic of Hawes and dominates his poem. He is not so long-winded as Lydgate, but he is more tedious. His handling of the seven-line stanza is heavy and uncertain; when he uses the heroic couplet he comes a little nearer to his masters, and in the character of False Report he is almost lively. But he had neither the art nor the inspiration to turn his intractable material into poetry. He was a man of the past, carrying the mediaval burdens of allegory and scholasticism, unaware of the renaissance of humanism which was at hand and might have lightened his load. Other works of his were The Example of Virtue, The Conversion of Swearers, and A Joyful Meditation to all England of the Coronation of Henry VIII.; and there were almost certainly some others which have been lost. SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST Texts.-Chaucerian and other Pieces, ed. W. W. Skeat (Clarendon Press, 1897).-OCCLEVE, T.: Werks, ed. F. J. Furnivall (2 parts, E.E.T.S., 1892, 1897).-LYDGATE, J.: Minor Poems, ed. J. O. Halliwell (Percy Society, 1840); Temple of Glass, ed. J. Schick (E.E.T.S., 1891); Troy Book, Part I., ed. H. Bergen (E.E.T.S., 1906).-GOWER, J.: Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Clarendon Press, 4 vols., 18991902); Confessio Amantis: Selections, ed. by G. C. Macaulay (Clarendon Press, 1903). Studies. MORLEY, H.: English Writers, Vol. IV. (Cassell, 1889).-KER, W. P.: Essays on Mediaval Literature (Macmillan, 1905).—SNELL, F. J.: The Age of Transition, 1400-1580 (2 vols., Bell, 1905). |